The thought has entered the minds of both goaltender Martin Brodeur and captain Zach Parise. Their careers with the Devils could be down to one final game.

When the Devils meet the Florida Panthers Tuesday night at the Prudential Center in Game 6 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series, they will be facing elimination. A loss sends the Devils home and two of their stars towards unrestricted free agency.

It is less likely for Brodeur, who has indicated he’d like to come back and has played well enough this season and for most of these playoffs to merit a new contract.

“Career-wise I don’t feel it’s going to be the last of it,” Brodeur said yesterday, “but I think opportunity-wise you never know. Who knows what kind of position we’re going to be in this time next year.

“Now I am in this position where we’re able to stay alive in the playoffs. I want to try to do as much as I can. It’s in the back of my head just because of the opportunity we have with a team I’ve really enjoyed playing with all year. I just want to keep this going, regardless of what the future will bring me. That’s irrelevant for me right now.”

Parise said he’s blocked it from his mind that his Devils career could be down to 60 minutes.

“It’s blocked out. I don’t think about it and I don’t really want to talk about it,” Parise said.

The Devils haven’t won a playoff game at home in which they were facing elimination since Game 4 of the 2006 conference semifinals against the Carolina Hurricanes. They won at the Meadowlands on May 13, 2006, and then lost the series the following night in Raleigh, N.C.

Since then, they’ve lost four straight playoff games in which they faced elimination. Now they face a fifth.

“If you look at some of the teams that won Stanley Cups of late, they went through hurdles,” Brodeur said. “Look at what Boston had to go through last year, so many Game 7s. It’s not going to be that easy. In 1994 we went seven games against Buffalo. We went to four overtimes in Game 6. We lost that game at had to get back at it and win Game 7. We went all the way to the conference finals from there.

“So there are situations that happen in the playoffs and it’s how you deal with them. You hope your team is going to be ready for that challenge. We’re playing guys that want it as bad as we do. It’s a matter of executing, getting the right bounces. staying disciplined and doing the right things to win hockey games. We have to start by winning one. From there we’ll move on. If we’re able to look back at this and come back and win the series, that’s going to give us that little push that maybe we need to advance further up in the playoffs.”

Brodeur thinks this Devils team might have what some recent teams lacked.
“I would like to think that way,” he said. “We never really slumped one way or streaked the other way that much until the end of the year. That’s a sign of being consistent and how you’re able to bounce back from some tough losses. I don’t expect anything less from the boys. Me included. We’re going to need to go out and leave everything out there on Tuesday.”

Parise feels similarly.

“I think we’re a better team,” he said. “I think we play a better team game than in the past. It’s been a tight series. Every game was win-able for us, so there are a lot of reasons to believe we can win these next two games.”